Beyond the Wall

  “He said Romans are barbarians. He asked me why you couldn’t stay in your homes. Why wasn’t your own country big enough for you? He asked me what made you hack and kill and force Mother Earth herself to submit to your will.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I had no idea. But that it was the same in Britannia as in Germania.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He asked if Britannia was vanquished. I told him she simply slept.”

  “Like the dog?”

  “Yes. And if roused … I said she might shake the Romans off, as easily as flies.”

  “What reply did he make?”

  Her eyes were blazing, but her voice was cold. Thoughtful. Calculating. The skin along the length of his arms prickled into bumps as she said, “He told me that if my country were to wake, she would only have to call. There are plenty of warriors who would come to her aid.”

  XIV

  They were well provisioned. Two ponies. Packs. A guide to take them across the country.

  They said a tender farewell to Flavia, promising that – even though it would add weeks to their journey – they would return this way with Phoebe if all went according to plan. If it did not … well … it was best not to speak of what might happen if they failed. Best not to even think of it lest they tempt the Fates to intervene.

  They rode for some days, then bartered passage on a small vessel that took them along a river where vineyards stretched across the hills. From there they rode on the cart of a trader who was travelling to the town where he sold his wares.

  There was no wall, but lines of ditches and defences stretched in both directions. Forts were dotted along it like beads on a necklace, keeping the Romans in and the savages out. Yet their cargo of wine was not only legitimate, but very welcome. The Empire’s thirst was infinite and the cart was only cursorily inspected, then let through the gate into the town beyond, and Cassia and Marcus along with it.

  Once they were on the Empire’s territory, they parted company with the trader. When he was out of sight, Marcus changed his clothes, shaved his beard, and became a Roman again so they could pass through Gallia without attracting undue attention.

  He’d brought a change of clothes for Cassia too.

  “Am I to be your slave again?” she asked.

  “No.” He pulled a garment from his pack. “This time you’re my wife.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. We’re newlyweds.”

  Cassia raised an eyebrow and said, “A love match, I hope? I don’t want to have been traded like a sack of flour.”

  “A love match? Why not? No one will question it if we choose to keep ourselves to ourselves.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Simply that there’ll be no need to be sociable with strangers. We can avoid awkward questions.”

  “They’ll still be asked,” Cassia said. “We should have a story prepared. Why are we travelling? We must have some reason.”

  “I suppose so. In search of work?”

  “Perhaps we plan to try our chances in Rome?”

  They began to walk south, embellishing their tale as they went along, inventing names for themselves, and a past history.

  “Where did we meet?” asked Cassia.

  “At market. Our eyes met across the fish stall.”

  “Oh, please! Think of the stench!”

  “Where then?”

  “Somewhere with more romance than a crowded market place! By a mountain stream perhaps. Or a clear lake.”

  “Perhaps I rescued you from drowning?” Marcus suggested.

  “I’d be more likely to have rescued you. Especially if you’d been drinking too much.”

  “Eurgh! Mead! Beer! Such filthy stuff!”

  With Flavia and her people behind them, and with Rome such a very long way ahead, Marcus was overtaken by a glorious lightness of heart. Suddenly he felt like a child released early from his lessons. They were alone. Cassia was at his side.

  He smiled at her as they walked. He laughed. Teased her. And she gave as good as she got. The innkeeper who rented them a room that night had no difficulty at all in believing them to be newly married.

  There was but a single bathhouse in the town they’d stopped in. It seemed that women were allowed there only for the hour after dawn. The rest of the time it was given over to the men’s use.

  After they’d eaten, Marcus declared that he was tired of reeking like a savage and would go and bathe.

  She laid a hand on his chest. The tips of her fingers were on his skin, her palm warm through the cloth of his tunic. “Marcus…” she said softly. “The oil. Not juniper. If you please.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No.”

  “Very well.”

  He thought of her while he bathed. There seemed some kind of promise in that gesture. That request.

  She was in bed by the time he got back. He entered the room nervous as a virgin bride.

  A lamp burned on the table beside her. He’d been prepared to wrap himself in his cloak and sleep on the floor if necessary, but she looked at him. Smiled. Pulled aside the blanket.

  And Marcus discovered that everything he’d said about Cassia when he’d sat with Tertius and wept into his wine, and everything he’d thought about her in the warmth of the mead-soaked barbarian hall was true.

  With Cassia, he’d found his home.

  XV

  As they journeyed south, the landscape changed. The dark forests of Germania gave way to something sparser. Drier. The heat grew more intense day by day. To Cassia, it was strange and unfamiliar but to Marcus, the smell of olive and vine brought unwelcome memories.

  One morning, when they lay late in bed, Cassia said, “Tell me the plan. When we reach Rome, will I still be your wife?”

  “No. A slave again, I’m afraid.”

  “And you? Who will you be?”

  She’d hit on the thing he’d almost worn his brain out puzzling over during the winter.

  “I’ve thought long and hard about that. I know that if – when – Phoebe’s brought out, we’ll need somewhere to lie low for a few days until the fuss has died down. But Rome’s such a public place – life is lived on the streets. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. We need to rent a quiet villa. And we need to prevent the neighbours from coming calling.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “You showed me last year how little people look at those who are grieving. I thought I’d be a young husband. A man who’s just lost his wife – lost her in childbirth, perhaps? And the baby too.”

  “Yes,” said Cassia grimly. “That will be enough to keep the curious away.”

  And so, in an olive grove not far from the southern coast of Gallia, Cassia became a boy again. Her hair had grown almost to her shoulders over the winter. As he cut it for the second time, Marcus experienced a sorrow for its loss that he’d not felt before. So many miles they’d travelled, side by side, sharing a room, sharing a bed. He wound tresses of her hair around his fingers. He loved to see it flaming red in the sunshine, dark chestnut in the rain. To feel it against his skin in the dark of the night. He pulled each strand taut before he took his knife to it. And then he dyed it with a concoction he’d acquired from a Gallic pharmacist. It seemed like an offence against nature. But there was no other way. A woman as striking as Cassia could not wander about in Rome alone: she would not be able to walk five paces before some thug tried to drag her into a hidden alleyway.

  * * *

  After another day’s walking, they reached the coast. Here Marcus donned the mantle of grief that would carry them into Rome and, he hoped, safely away from it. He would not shave again. Sorrow would explain both his beard and his unkempt state, his inability to converse pleasantly with other travellers.

  In leaden tones he enquired at the docks about vessels that would carry them to Ostia. As luck would have it, there was a merchant vessel departing with the high tide. It was
just then being loaded with the last of its cargo. Stepping aboard, they were confined to a tiny corner of the deck along with half a dozen other travellers but the price was low enough to justify the discomfort.

  The wind was against them. A long and tedious voyage followed, at the end of which Marcus Aurelius Aquila arrived in Italia, the land of his forebears, feeling so different to the young man who’d left two years before he was certain that his own father wouldn’t have recognized him.

  XVI

  They took a house in a suburban district at the far edge of the city between the aqueduct and the eastern gate. Using the money he’d borrowed in Londinium on the strength of his father’s name, Marcus paid a month’s rent in advance. He did not even attempt to barter and the landlord – delighted to have a tenant so free with his coins – escorted them through the streets to both show them the way and open the place up. He was talkative and inclined to gossip but Marcus was unresponsive. When the man paused for breath, Cassia found an opportunity to mutter that her master was a grieving widower.

  “He’s not himself. His wife died only five days ago. Their infant son along with her.” Word of Marcus’s sorry condition travelled faster than they could walk. By the time they neared the street in which the villa lay, neighbours were calling their children in from their street games and adults were turning their heads aside.

  The landlord stayed only long enough to unlock the gate and show them the principal rooms.

  “I can arrange for slaves, should you need them,” he said.

  “No … no. My lad here will serve.”

  “A cook, perhaps?”

  “No! I don’t want strangers!”

  “Very well. I’ll leave you in peace but if you change your mind, send your boy to me. I can arrange for anything, anything at all. I’ll give you the very best prices. I’m honest, you see? Unlike some I could mention.”

  A small cry escaped Marcus’s throat and his face contorted as if he was about to start weeping.

  Alarmed, the landlord hastily departed.

  When the door was safely barred behind him, Marcus threw Cassia a brief smile.

  “And so … we have a house.” He sat down on a stool. “To business. We’ve arrived in Rome. All we need to do now is work out how and when we will leave.”

  “And who with,” said Cassia. “Let’s hope Phoebe doesn’t react the way my brother did. We can’t take her away by force.”

  “True. First I need to find her. I’ll need to get her entirely alone. It will be hard: my father keeps her close to him.”

  “Can’t we get word to her through the other slaves?”

  “No. I don’t want any of them knowing I am here. I wouldn’t trust them to keep it quiet. Don’t look that way, Cassia! I don’t mean they’re dishonest in themselves. You don’t know my father. The very walls have eyes and ears in his house. He’s a powerful man. There are too many people who’d try to buy his favour by betraying her. By betraying us. I must get into the house myself, unnoticed.”

  “Not easy!”

  “No … but again I’ve learned from you. The best place to hide is in full view. My father is fond of laying on lavish entertainments. He likes to display his wealth: his mighty power and influence. That will be the way to get in.”

  “And if he recognizes you?”

  “He won’t. I can pass as a masked entertainer. Or a musician, perhaps; a supplier of victuals. There are a thousand and one ways to hide. He’s sure to be throwing some kind of grand festivity during the next few weeks. I need to find out what. Listening to the talk in the streets will tell me that, and yet…” He felt suddenly worried. “I need to move freely about the city. Can I do that in this disguise? Wouldn’t a grieving widower sit in the dark and weep?”

  “No,” said Cassia. “Grief itches. It gives no peace. You’re a man deranged with sorrow: you’re more likely to walk the streets from sunrise to sunset than keep still.”

  He looked at her, pity in his eyes. “You’ve felt sorrow like this?”

  “Yes. For my mother. But I’ve seen it in other people too. If you haunt Rome like a restless spirit, no one will question it.”

  XVII

  After a week of walking in the city, lingering in taverns, wallowing in the public baths, Marcus gleaned the information he needed. His father did indeed have a lavish feast laid on the next week. Moreover it was to be for prominent traders from all over the Empire.

  “He’ll know very few of them well. It will be an easy crowd to lose myself in.”

  It did not take much more eavesdropping for Marcus to discover the name of a prominent merchant from Palmyra who had been invited: a man who was in Rome seeking new business opportunities for himself and his family. A man whose hair was long and plaited, who wore a beard as Marcus himself now did.

  “I’ll pass as one of his party,” he told Cassia.

  “But he’ll know you for a stranger, won’t he?”

  “We’ll watch from the corner until he goes in. I can appear a few moments later – say that I was delayed. If I wear the same style of dress, trim my beard like his, plait my hair… Yes, I believe I can talk my way past the doorkeepers. And you’ll come with me. A man like that always has a cup-bearer at his side.”

  A week later Marcus entered the public baths as a grieving widower. He emerged as a Palmyrene merchant: a wealthy man, in silken robes and finely tooled sandals, dripping with jewellery, his skin oiled, his hair plaited and beaded in the fashion he’d asked the barber to copy from the original.

  Cassia likewise was transformed from slave of all work to cup-bearer, whose only task now was to be at her master’s elbow.

  They waited outside in the shadows.

  Seeing the place he’d been born and raised in had an unnerving effect on Marcus. High walls concealed a perfect square of grounds from the plebeians’ curious eyes. It was his father’s private kingdom, the villa the crowning glory of splendid, ornamental gardens.

  Marcus imagined walking through the gates. The approach to the house. The pool running the length of it, fountains spilling from the walls either side. Two avenues of cypress and palm trees. Steps leading to the entrance.

  It was all designed to intimidate as much as to impress. To scream wealth and power and influence.

  And inside the house itself: every pillar, every slab, every tile of every mosaic was painfully familiar to him. He could see it all in his mind’s eye. He could find his way blindfold. Marcus was satisfied that he and Cassia had planned this scheme in meticulous detail.

  But there was one unknown factor, one thing that they could not predict or arrange.

  Phoebe. He hadn’t spoken to her for ten years. He knew nothing about her now. Would she come away? Or was she too broken to even consider it?

  He stood beside his cup-bearer, silently observing the arriving guests, itching to get started but able to do nothing. He couldn’t even talk to Cassia without attracting attention.

  When the party from Palmyra arrived, resplendent in their finery, he felt a surge of gratitude.

  As soon as the last of them had been admitted, Marcus hurried across the street, Cassia at his heels. He gave every appearance of having been momentarily delayed. He cursed his slave, complaining of a broken sandal strap, blaming the boy for not noticing it before. And then he was calling out a name – a fictitious one that sounded gloriously foreign to Roman ears. He appeared to be looking for his companions, rushing to catch up with them.

  It worked. With scarcely a glance at either him or Cassia, the gatekeepers stood aside to let them enter.

  Now keeping a very careful distance from the Palmyrans, he followed them through the grounds towards the villa. Up the marble steps. Between the columns to where guests were crowding into the vast atrium.

  At its heart his father lay on a couch, graciously taking compliments from those who sought his favour.

  Keeping his back to his parent, Marcus mingled with the other guests.

  He’d hoped Phoebe
would be one of the slaves who waited at the feast but he didn’t see her there.

  The original plan had been for him to point his sister out to Cassia. For Cassia to find an opportunity of getting her alone. Cassia, and only Cassia, could be trusted to pass word to his sister telling her where and when they would wait. And now the whole scheme had fallen at the first obstacle!

  Well then, he’d have to follow the second scenario they’d imagined and go looking for her himself. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the layout of the place.

  And if he was found?

  It was a riskier strategy. But a merchant, a stranger in the city, one not familiar with the customs of Rome? If anyone were to discover him lost and wandering through the villa’s private rooms, it could be explained away.

  Briefly Cassia’s eyes rested on him. She had work of her own to do that night. She’d slip away shortly on the pretext of refilling his cup. After that she’d leave the villa and its grounds.

  She was readying herself to do so when the worst of all possible things occurred: Marcus was recognized.

  The Fool. Felix. A hunchback his father had purchased years before Marcus was even born. An oddity, a freak. Bought to amuse guests with his deformity. A man who’d been jeered at. Tormented. Scorned every day of his life. Who’d never been anything other than kind to Marcus.

  Felix was dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, bells dangling from his belt that tinkled as he moved so no one could miss the spectacle of him shuffling between them.

  Marcus caught sight of him at the edge of his vision and turned aside. The one part of him he couldn’t disguise was his eyes and they’d give too much away.

  So the little man only saw Marcus from the back, but something in the outline of his master’s son was too familiar to go unremarked.

  Slave though he was, the familiar name escaped him: “Marcus?”

  Most people will turn when they hear their own name being said aloud, whether the speaker intends to catch their attention or not. Amid a hubbub of conversation the ear catches it like a fish on a hook. But Marcus was practised enough to not blink or twitch or turn. He made no sign at all that the name meant anything to him. Any onlooker would have assumed the hunchback was simply muttering to himself.